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Then and now; veterans reunited after 30 years

Fri, 09 Jul 1999 - 12:00 AM CST

1967. Ft. Hood. Killeen, Texas. Cecil Adams, 20, and Darcy
Haisley, 18, are going through boot camp together. It's near the end
of the month. Haisley is broke and hanging around the barracks with
nothing to do.

"Cecil would witness to me and I had a lot of stupid arguments
about God," Haisley remembers now. "He invited me to this little
storefront hole-in-the-wall kind of church. People called
him 'Brother Adams.' All this 'Brother' and 'Sister' stuff. During
the service, a lady to my right was holding up her hands
saying, 'Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.' At the altar call, Cecil kept
saying, 'You can go now.' I didn't know what he meant. I just wanted
to get out of there."

1968. Vietnam. An outpost near Da Nang. Adams and Haisley are
serving together. Adams is a conscientious objector serving as a
medic.

"I knew he was a conscientious objector and wouldn't carry a
weapon," Haisley says. "But I remember a time when a 17-year-old kid
named Atwood was killed by a sniper and everybody was hugging the
ground and Cecil was up and moving with his medic bag and working on
this kid."

Haisley could see that Adams' talk about religion was not empty
words.

"There was something about Cecil. I remember asking him what
religion he was, and he said, 'I just believe the Bible.' I didn't
know what to make of that. I just knew that he was different and had
something that was genuine. Probably what made the biggest impact on
my life was just watching his life. Just seeing the contrast between
the way I and the rest of the guys were living and how he was
living."

Haisley's life was a wreck. He was constantly smoking marijuana.
Constantly trying to numb his awareness of his own mortality. And
constantly confronted with Cecil.

"I remember one day the guys were giving Cecil a rough time and my
friend George Vanderdeusen said to me, 'You know, Cecil's right.' We
were laying on this bunk having a cigarette. And I looked at George
kind of funny and said, 'What do you mean?' And he said, 'I used to
be really involved in Youth For Christ. What Cecil believes is
right.'

"George was killed later. I had been wounded and Med Evac'd out,
when I heard he was hit. I went and visited him in the hospital. I
knew nothing about the gospel or the Lord. It was an intensive care
unit. I remember an incredibly hopeless feeling. I didn't know what
to say, and he said to me, 'They want to take my legs.' I didn't know
what to say. I was loaded on dope. I remember saying, 'You're going
to be ok.'"

1969. Everett, Washington. Haisley has come back to his hometown
after his tour of duty. His life continues to spiral downward.

"I came home and got into drugs real heavy," he says. "Actually
got to the point where I thought I was an animal and was eating with
my bare hands. One day there were these people preaching the gospel
down on the street corner. And I went over and talked to them. The
first thing I said to the guy on the corner was, 'I'm not afraid to
take all of my clothes off, right here, right now.' That's where I
was at.'"

The group invited Haisley to their church, Gospel Light Temple, an
independent Pentecostal fellowship.

"The guy that preached had a real anointing," Haisley recalls. "I
went down to the altar."

This time it was Haisley's turn to say, "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus."

"I started saying it to copy the other people at the altar and I
started feeling horrible. So I started saying it louder. I got to the
point where I was screaming 'Jesus!' at the top of my lungs. The
whole church stopped. They must have thought, 'We've got this
madman.'"

And then a man walked up behind Haisley. He laid his hands on his
shoulder and quietly said, 'Son, you don't have to scream. Jesus
hears you.'"

Three weeks later, Haisley received the baptism in the Holy
Spirit.

"I used to tell the guys in our unit, 'If I ever got religion, I'd
want the kind that Cecil's got,'" he says. Now he had it.

Haisley's transformation was immediate and dramatic. He had been
living on the streets using drugs; he returned to share the
gospel.

"Everybody knew me," he says. "I witnessed to thousands of people
in the first couple of years. I've led hundreds of people to the
Lord."

1999. Taos, New Mexico. Cecil Adams and Darcy Haisley are reunited
at "The Gathering," an organized reunion of the 5/46th 198th Light
Infantry Battalion.

"About the middle of May, my wife gets a phone call," remembers
the Rev. Cecil Adams, now a veteran pastor with the Assemblies of
God. "And this man says, 'Is this the religious Cecil Adams that was
a medic in Vietnam?' And she said, 'Yes.' And he said, 'Well, for 30
years I've been looking for him. He witnessed to me over and over and
I'm now an Assemblies of God pastor. And I'm shocked that not only is
he an Assemblies of God minister, but he's pastoring in Killeen of
all places. He's the one who took me to that little church that
scared me."

Weeks later, the two friends saw one another for the first time in
more than 20 years in Taos.

"It was powerful emotionally," Adams says. When we arrived at the
reunion, they expected me to be religious. They knew about me. But
they were shocked to find out here's Haisley and now he's like
Adams!"

Just as Haisley had watched Adams' life, the others in the unit
now saw his own complete change.

"There were a lot of people that came up to me and they just
couldn't believe the transformation in my life. The way I had been
living, they probably figured it was a miracle I was even alive."

The Revs. Haisley and Adams now share the joy of salvation as they
pastor Assemblies of God churches in Killeen and Everett. They also
continue to share painful memories of their months in Vietnam. But
they use those memories constructively.

"When I have flashbacks," Adams says, "I pray for the men I knew
there. Haisley is actually the second one who has come to Christ in
the years since I've been home. And if there is one thing I really
focus on from those years, it's the power of soul winning. Your
witness is so powerful, that even though you don't know they came to
Christ, God's at work in their lives. We think, 'Well, I witness and
people turn me down.' Yes, these guys all turned me down. But look
what's happened. This is two of them. How many more?"

"After I got saved," Haisley says, "I got to thinking about George
Vanderdeusen. I had really cared about this guy. I really loved him.
And it was one of those tough things when he was blown away. And all
of a sudden, it dawned on me that he had been in that hospital 3 days
before he died. And God gave me an assurance that Vanderdeusen had
that time so he could get right with the Lord. He was going home. I
always feel like when I get to heaven, he's going to be waiting and
yelling out my name."